


Five Things Not on Jake Jensen’s Resumé

by omphale23



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Losers (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:21:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphale23/pseuds/omphale23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was not, strictly speaking, Jake’s fault that he ended up in jail.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things Not on Jake Jensen’s Resumé

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lynnmonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynnmonster/gifts).



_1\. Information systems security, personnel management, and new employee training: Stark Industries Summer Internship Program for At-Risk Youth._

It was not, strictly speaking, Jake’s fault that he ended up in jail. Okay, so it was partly his fault, because he had, in fact, hacked the security algorithm at Stark Industries and maybe, possibly, planted a very small piece of code. And yes, fine, that was illegal and also potentially destructive and perhaps anyone with a bit of sense would have realized it was a bad idea.

Jake had never been very good at self-preservation, though, and he’d been curious. He needed to see if he _could_ do it, and he hadn’t thought too far beyond that. The code didn’t even do anything—it was a placeholder, a backdoor left so that when Jake finished his homework he could come back and think of something better to leave his mark, bragging rights against the next hacker to manage the trick.

He hadn’t expected the next hacker to stumble in while Jake was stuck in seventh period, pretending to learn synthetic division. (Again.) And he hadn’t expected that hacker to be Tony Stark. ( _You’re good at this, kid, come work for me, I’ll make you famous_ , read the new documentation. Jake was tempted but he didn’t want to be famous, and so he assumed he’d be spending the summer doing community service. Again.)

Even if Jake _had_ expected to get caught by the Stark who ran Stark Industries, he wouldn’t have expected to get dropped into an after-school program instead of being sent to juvie (again) and he would never, ever, in a million years, have expected to spend most of his time in that program planning attacks on that same security system, training an exceptionally slow IT guy named Jarvis. So in the end, finding out (when the cops showed up, trailing sheepishly behind a very pissed-off Obadiah Stane) that Jarvis was a fledgling AI built by Tony in a fit of whiskey and insomnia, piggybacked on Jake’s original code and very much not approved by the board of directors? That one was an actual surprise. (And not a good one, despite the rumors afterward.)

Not that Jake should have expected any of it. What sort of person hacks his own company, anyhow?

Fine. Jake would hack his own company. Not that he had one. But if he did, he would probably get bored and wonder if it were possible and okay, in retrospect, he can kind of see Tony’s point.

But the jail thing is still not Jake’s fault. 

 

_2\. MIT Class of 1994._

Jake listened. (Sometimes.) 

Not very often, but occasionally, and so when he overheard a couple of the other kids in detention (again, not his fault, why did everyone always think that? When Jake did things that people should blame him for, he didn’t get _caught_ because he wasn’t an idiot, he was just easily distracted) whispering about how it was harder to score a zero than a 1600, he did the math.

It wasn’t. Statistically, it was easier to find one of the four wrong answers than the one right one, and Jake wrote up the error allowances and animated a confidence interval for his math class, and then when it came time to take the test, he couldn’t help himself. For a minute at the end, he considered getting just one question right, but Jake had never been taught to quit.

His foster parents weren’t pleased, and Jake tried to look sorry but he wasn’t. ( _You need to be a better liar. Stop pretending you’re Captain America or something_ , wrote Mr. Stark. Jake deleted the email without replying.) He wasn’t going to college to spend four years surrounded by the same people who glared at him in the halls and muttering about his criminal record as he passed. 

It was like no one had ever heard of sealed juvenile records. (Jake’s record wasn’t sealed. According to the State of New Hampshire, Jake’s record never existed in the first place.)

That spring, an essay Jake hadn’t written got him accepted to MIT. When the admissions office called to ask if he’d really gotten a recommendation letter from Dr. Tony Stark, the counselor hinted gently that maybe next time it shouldn’t be signed _former parole officer and partner in crime_.

Jake’s foster parents made him send a very nice note thanking Dr. Stark. Jake taped it to a box full of magnets, with special instructions to place the whole thing right next to Tony Stark's office computer. 

 

_3\. Demolitions Expert._

Jake was late for his Air Force OCS interview ( _I know a guy_ , Tony Stark had said, and Jake was really going to need to stop answering when Tony Stark called. Eventually), and he accidentally insulted the Mustache March (okay, he on-purpose insulted the Mustache March, but in Jake’s defense it was a pretty stupid tradition). By the time he finished explaining his brilliant idea for jetpacks to replace C-17s (much more fuel-efficient, and Jake wasn’t really that fond of flying, but he could totally get behind remote controlled detonation and targeted supply drops) the campus recruiter (Jake almost made a joke at the nametape, but he couldn’t decide between whistling John Denver songs and asking about the pizza at Oxford; by the time he settled on quoting Frost, it didn’t seem like it would be funny enough to bother. Plus the guy already looked like he seriously regretted agreeing to show up.) suggested that he try the Army instead.

The Army didn’t know who Jake was. It was _fantastic_ , the best thing he could imagine, and their recruiter didn’t even flinch when Jake finished the test battery early and spent the rest of the time designing a trebuchet with paper clips and a broken rubber band.

He was a little unnerved when the whole contraption exploded five minutes later, but Jake’s results made up for the scorch marks. No one asked him about college, and Jake had long since stopped volunteering information about himself. (He filled the conversational spaces with meaningless jokes and the same few stories, acted like he wasn’t listening, was careful not to give away anything interesting. Jake was always talking, but he made a point of never communicating. Communicating ended...well, badly. )

Basic training sucked, (sucked was maybe not the word for it. There maybe wasn’t a word in English for how much basic sucked), but then there were circuit boards and firearms and everyone was too tired to notice how weird Jake was even if no one talked to him. Jake got by. And then he met PFC Carlos Alvarez, so it all balanced out.

 

_4\. Assistant Limb Assembler, My Pretty Widdle Baby Doll Plant._

He could only set aside enough bandwidth to check the news feeds twice a week, and Jake thought he might be losing his shit a little. He checked his Iron Man auto-update algorithm (Jake wasn’t friends with Tony Stark. He was just concerned, because for a few months Tony hadn’t sent even a single demanding text message, and later Jake found out that he’d been held hostage and come back with a flying suit and a heart problem so secret that three weeks of snooping hadn’t turned up the details. Now Tony’s assistant looked exhausted at press conferences and Tony kept doing stupid shit—stupider than usual, which was really saying something—and Jake was maybe worried about watching his own self-destructive tendencies play out on CNN. But they weren’t friends). He sent reassuring messages to Jolene. He waved in the background of tourist photos, hoping that the random uploads would be enough to keep JARVIS from calling in the Air Force.

And he made sure that Cougar’s grandmother didn’t come hunt them down for missing three family weddings in a row (the real reason Jake wasn’t afraid of Max? Nana had cornered Jake his first time visiting and grilled him about his intentions. Nothing was frightening after that. If Cougar even got a scratch during all this, Max was going to be the most hated _gringo_ on three continents, and Jake wouldn’t put money on his survival even if the Losers didn’t succeed). 

Through it all, Jake stayed up nights searching for reasons and loopholes and setting up traces and dead ends and generally making a nuisance of himself. When Cougar startled awake and crawled out of bed in the morning, Jake was usually asleep over his keyboard. Neither of them mentioned it, but Jake was more sure every morning that if something didn’t happen soon, they’d all go mad.

 

_5\. Professional Actor, Amateur Cockblocker, and World-Class Idiot._

Everyone assumed they’d been together for years. Jake found it hilarious, the idea that Cougar might be interested. Right up until Ms. Virginia Potts ( _Oh god, you gotta call her that to her face, Jake. Come on, do it for me, just this one little favor?_ said Tony over drinks in a gritty back-alley restaurant, and Jake was getting worse at telling him no, not better. This was definitely going to be a problem. Also, why was Captain America glaring at them? Jake was pretty sure—marginally sure—that he hadn’t done anything recently to deserve the wrath of anyone at the table except maybe Cougar, who was also glaring, which, okay, explained a lot), sent an email that called Jake a moron (she was usually so polite, and he was immediately suspicious—well, more suspicious) and included an itemized, cross-indexed interactive spreadsheet of Jake’s mission-related injuries and C. Alvarez’s subsequent range scores. 

Jake didn’t ask how Tony got them. He did send a basket of motherboards to Stark Tower. (The note read, _The student has become the master_ , and in response Jake got a toaster that refused every breakfast option but cinnamon raisin bagels. It was best not to ask, and he didn’t really like toast anyway. It worked out.) And then he bought Cougar a new bottle of gun oil and a package of zip ties and invited him to play a round of Frustrated Drill Sergeant and Mouthy Recruit. 

A few minutes in the middle ended up on X-Tube, posted from Jake’s Starkphone (which had _not_ been recording, and Jake was definitely going to be asking about remote operation subroutines next time he saw Tony). Jake thought about getting angry but then he found a much better idea. Cougar didn’t do anything but smirk at the helmet, and that weekend Steve Rogers sent them a fruit basket. Jake was going to call it a win.

 

_6\. Volunteer Team Manager, Petunias Under-12 Girls’ Soccer Club_

Every couple of months, Stark Industries still calls Jake to ask if he needs a job. This time, Jake glances over at Cougar—asleep on the couch, index finger twitching on an imaginary trigger—and asks about partner benefits. 

He thinks he might want a resumé, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to [sansets](http://sansets.dreamwidth.org/), who is much better than I am at seeing what's missing.


End file.
